Overview
What Is Sketch to Stretch?
Sketch to Stretch 1 is a reading comprehension strategy where students visualize a passage of text and then interpret it through drawing. The strategy encourages creative thinking, welcomes diverse perspectives, and fosters discussion of various interpretations. It is important that when using this strategy, students understand that the expectation is for them to “sketch” and not for them to produce works of art.
It’s long been known that drawing something helps a person remember it. Results of a study published in 2018 show that drawing is superior to activities such as reading or writing because it forces the person to process information in multiple ways: visually, kinesthetically, and semantically. 2 Across a series of experiments, researchers found drawing information to be a powerful way to boost memory, increasing recall by nearly double.” 3
- 1J. C. Harste, K. C. Short, and C. Burke, Creating Classrooms for Authors: The Reading-Writing Connection, (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishers, 1988).
- 2Fernandes, Myra A., Jeffrey D. Wammes, and Melissa E. Meade. “The Surprisingly Powerful Influence of Drawing on Memory.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 27, no. 5 (2018): 302–8.
- 3The Science of Drawing and Memory published by Edutopia, March 2019.